aamcnamara | things around and about Fourth Street

1. I would totally read Tom Bombadil fanfic.

2.
I have been to several cons now. At those cons, I have attended many panels about YA fiction. This is partially because I like YA fiction and partially because I feel more confident at YA panels; I've more often read more of the books being discussed, and as a teen I get the impression that my Opinions get more respect on YA panels, because I am a Real Live Teen. (Which is not to say that I haven't said things at other panels, but I get uncertain of myself in non-YA panels, because I know that everyone else has probably read much more of what's being discussed than I have.)

Panels like the one we had at Fourth Street this year are good in some ways and fail in others. The panel description asked why the bestsellers are nominally YA, why adults read YA. Which are valid questions, if not the questions that I think are interesting about YA. The thing is that at conventions, where 99.9% of those attending are adults, if the room is not full of people who read YA these days, the conversation does not go directly to "why do these things happen", it looks at it from a standpoint of "the last time I read YA or YA-type books was when I was a kid/teenager, what has changed since then to make these things happen?"

And, okay, there is merit in looking at the history of any genre. YA, though, strikes me as being one of the ones in which the history of the genre is largely orthogonal to talking about the genre as it is today. There are important books, sure; there are books that changed the way the genre looked, sure; but those books are not the ones that many teens read today. When talking about the way that SFF is today, we talk about the history of the genre--"The Last 20 Years in Fantasy" was another panel at Fourth Street--and when we talk about the great books of SFF, we start with Heinlein and Tolkien and work our way up.

There are probably people who, for example, consider S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders completely necessary for their development as a person, and who go back to reread it (just as there are people who feel that way about Heinlein). But while these people may exist, they are largely not teens any more. Same with Catcher in the Rye, or any other classic YA book.

And this voice is largely unimportant in the genre. YA is about the here and now. However you define it--"books that teens read", "a marketing category"--YA is about what teens are reading, present tense.

This may be changing. There are a lot of adults now who read YA books. (This is what the panel was about, yes, but from a different angle.) These adults, who perhaps read YA as a teen and have kept reading it, are the thing in YA that is most like the community around SFF. There are also communities of YA writers that have begun to spring up, on the Internet and offline. Maybe as these communities grow, we'll see books in dialogue with each other in YA the same way that books are in dialogue in SFF.

I am entirely uncertain if that is a good or a bad thing.

(Going back to conventions, panels like the one we had at Wiscon this year about gender roles in YA SFF tend to go better for me. There were book recommendations, discussion of how gender roles are being subverted in YA SFF these days and how they're being reinforced, and almost all of the books mentioned were recent books. It wasn't a picture of how the genre was; it was a picture of how the genre is.)

I would be interested to hear opinions on this one. From people of any age, who have any range of interest in YA.

3. I need to start reading a lot more nonfiction.

4. Today is my official Day to Relax and Not See People. And, you know, keep working on the novel. (And slush.)

5.

37759 / 80000

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

janni.livejournal.com

I find YA panels at cons a little frustrating, because it seems you need to spend half the panel trying to explain what YA is to an audience that hasn't been near the YA section of a bookstore or library in ages (it's not fiction for elementary school kids, it's also not fiction with the sex and violence and language removed ...) And often not just the audience--I've been to cons where the panelists don't know what YA is either.

And even outside of cons, every so often it seems another adult writer decides "oh, maybe I should write a YA book now," goes off to read a few, and comes back with "OMG how can we be exposing the children to Books Like This." (Because that YA books are for teens, and that teens are not children, is a huge part of the misunderstanding.) (Also that teens are intelligent and critical readers who won't be harmed be random content and in fact often question and argue with their reading more than adults do.)

Also, if I hear Heinlein invoked one more time, I'm going to scream. Because if you can't understand why Heinlein juveniles are not the way to introduce contemporary teens to SF, well, you need to go read more and spend time with teens more both.

The best YA panels I've been to/on have been the ones where there've both been teens in the audience, and the panelists have had sense enough to let them speak.

I think one could do worse than to have those teens on the panel, and to put the adults in the audience so they can listen a bit more.

From:

janni.livejournal.com

Also (okay, so this is a bit of a soapbox for me), why is it so much of an issue for adult readers that YA books are bestsellers? Are good writing and high sales both supposed to be reserved for adults? Even as an adult, I want to say--come on, you have so much of the control and the power already--are you really begrudging the notion that some of the best (and best selling) books might be for teens?

From:

things around and about Fourth Street

Navigation

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags